Posted by Virus Bulletin on May 29, 2013
New round of figures compare products to Microsoft baselines.
Independent test organization AV-Test has released its latest bimonthly report, covering 26 consumer products and nine business solutions. As in the last report, Microsoft solutions were considered a baseline level, although at least one product which scored lower than Microsoft was still awarded certification.
As usual, products were rated on a number of metrics, divided into three main categories covering 'Protection' (detection rates in a number of different malware-spotting tests), 'Performance' (speed measures) and 'Usability' (false positive measures). Up to six points were awarded for each part, for a possible total of 18, and in order to achieve certification 10 points were needed - with at least one in each section.
Removal and clean-up tests, formerly part of AV-Test's overall rating scheme, have been moved out to a separate, standalone test. The testing covered in this report took place through March and April 2013, on the Windows XP platform.
In the consumer set, top dogs were Bitdefender with 17 out of a possible 18 points. Symantec's Norton was not far behind with 16, while Avast's free solution and offerings from F-Secure and Kaspersky were also singled out for praise with 15.5 each. AVG's free edition and products from Tencent and Webroot scored 15, just ahead of AVG's Internet Security suite, BullGuard, G Data, Panda and Qihoo on 14.5.
A little off the pace were Microworld's eScan, the now defunct PC Tools Internet Security, and Trend Micro's Titanium Maximum Security, all down on 14 points, ESET and Norman on 13, and Avira, Check Point's Zone Alarm, Comodo, VIPRE from ThreatTrack Security (formerly GFI), Kingsoft and McAfee were all looking rather shabby on 12.5.
Microsoft's Security Essentials, considered the baseline for the test, scored 11.5, and lowly AhnLab trailed in well behind the competition on 10.5, just enough to scrape past the certification pass mark.
In the corporate part of the test, F-Secure came top with its Client Security taking 16.5 points, narrowly ahead of Symantec's Endpoint Protection which mangaed 16. Webroot's SecureAnywhere scored a creditable 15, with Fortinet and Kaspersky Lab both on 14.5 and McAfee and Sophos not far behind on 14. Trend Micro's Office Scan put in a rather disappointing showing with 12 points, just ahead of Microsoft's System Center Endpoint Protection which managed 11.5.
Full details of the test can be found at the AV-Test.org website here.
AV product testing in general tends to be a topic that sparks heated discussion and debate within the industry - several presentations at this year's VB conference will cover various aspects of testing - including a meta-analysis of recent malware tests (presented by Richard Ford and Liam Mayron, FIT), and the good, the bad, and the ugly of real-world testing (Aditya Kapoor and Craig Schmugar, McAfee).
The VB2013 conference runs from 2-4 October, in Berlin, Germany. The full programme is here. Registration is open now.
Posted on 29 May 2013 by John Hawes
